20872A Admiral Refrigerator - Instructions

I removed the nuts that held the motor mount, then removed fan blade, cut the wires, and slid the motor pass the mounts and the coil shroud, Installed motor in reverse order. worked out ok.

looked a website removed part found broken item order and installed in 15 minutes, easy simple fix very low cost change

rl

Unplug the Frig and left the freezer side total defrost. Mine was so frozen up, it took about 6 hours with the door open. I had a towel in the botton to catch all the water and ice that fell.

Removed all the shelving units. There are 3 screws that hold the ice maker in place. Loosen the 2 screws above the ice maker about 3 or so turns. Then remove the screw under the ice maker completely. Then lift the ice maker off of the 2 screws that you just loosened. Then with a small flat blade screwdriver, push the plastic clip that holds the connector of wires that plug into the ice maker.

Then remove the screws that hold the back plastic cover that conseals the coil.

Now you should see the coils. There is one heater unit in the middle and one at the botton. There is a screw on each side of the heater unit that you need to take out. They are screwed into a metal bracket that is part of the coil system. Once the screws are removed, you simply remove the heater units. They are plugged in at the top of the coil system on a circuit board. Unplug them from there, (one of the spades connector was slightly bigger then the other, so I new where to plug them back in). Fish all the wire and heater untis out and you are ready to re-oinstall the new units.

Getting the wires back up through the coils was tricky, but I was able to do it.

The hardest thing was working inside the freezer unit. It is not very wide and was sometimes hard to get both hand inside to work.

Removed rear cover to see non-operating fan - removed three mounting screws on the motor that were a challenge to access. Swapped fan from old motor onto new motor - one threaded nut on the motor shaft. Spliced new fan wires into fan wires of the wiring harness and mounted with three self-tapping screws supplied with new fan motor. Replaced rear cover and plugged it in! Now the refrigerator cools like new (1981 model side-by-side Admiral)

Remove the 3 screws and disconect the plug. The wiring harnes on the new Ice Make did not match so I use the wiring harness from my old unit. I pluged the new one in and screwed in the three screws and it was ready. I did have to wait a full 24 hours before the first 8 pieces of ice eject out.

Pulled out the refrigerator and removed the two panels from the rear of the refrigerator. Removed the fan held in by four screws and unplugged the connector. Soldered on the original connector, installed the fan to the motor and re-installed the unit into the refrigerator. Then blew out and vaccumed the condenser coils.

The most time-consuming part was removing the screws. First, remove the 8 screws that attaches the ice bin to the front cover. This will free up the auger enough to pull up the back end where the drive ring is held in place. The ring just pops right out. The only thing I recommend is as long as you have the bin out (and empty), go ahead and give it a good wash. Make sure it is thoroughly dry so that no ice freezes to the moving parts.

The most difficult part was determining what the problem was, was it the defrost timer, the themostat or the heater. Once I diagnosed the heater the ordering was easy. Installing it took about 30 minutes but waiting for the frig to cool to the point where the thermostat opened took a little longer than I thought. When I saw that orange glow from the heater I knew I saved myself a hundred buck.

Removed all screws in rear panel & removed (this was easy) . unpluged heater wires & fished out not easy. Used string and 3/8" nut for weight, droped behind evaporator to pull elect wire from heater. ( this was not easy) replaced rear panel & all screws.

I read what other people had done so I tried the easiest solution--Forced, without breaking, the plastic & fit the ring right where it needed to be.

removed all three screws, disconnected power. then I switched out the plug assembly (mine had different male adapter. Then the Control Arm, new arm was to wide and took up to much space when it was fully extended. Put it back in reverse order, and within 5 hours it was making ice.

To replace the broken drive coupling on the motor end of the auger requires sliding the ice bin out of the freezer section of the refrigerator. Remove the ice cubes and let it thaw out for a few minutes. Remove five screws holding the front face on the ice bin to remove the ice auger. slip the new drive coupling over the end of the auger. reassemble and replace the face plate with the five screws. Slide the ice bin back in the freezer. Less than fifteen minutes it was finished.

yup

I just lifed the old grate off and layed the new one in.

Unloading the freezer and removing the back panel were the most time consuming aspect of this repair. Many models only have 4 screws, but this one has 9, and being a side by side it was a tight fit to reach them. Once defrosted we tested the thermostat, found it "dead", and ordered a new one. The part came within 3 business days. Installing it took minutes, since we had not permanently screwed in the back panel again. We didn't want to reload everything until we knew things worked properly, so we didn't put everything back right away. We thought we had further problems as the freezer got really cold but the frig still didn't get down to temp. Turns out we just needed to reinstall the fan shield which we'd taken off along with other parts to access and check the vents. The fan shield must be in place to direct the cold air into the vent to the refrigerator. Duh! It was an oversight that once caught made total sense! Now all works fine on this 20 year old Maytag side by side!